Udi Mokady

Co-founder and Executive Chairman, CyberArk Software · Privileged access management category creator

Udi Mokady built CyberArk Software into the global category leader in privileged-access management — the cybersecurity discipline that protects the deepest administrative credentials inside every modern enterprise.

Mokady co-founded CyberArk in 1999 with Alon Cohen, served as chief executive for twenty-four years, took the company public on Nasdaq in 2014, and transitioned to Executive Chairman in 2023. The category that CyberArk effectively created — privileged-access management, now a multi-billion-dollar enterprise security segment — was a Mokady-era contribution to global cybersecurity that the broader industry then institutionalized around. In February 2026 CyberArk was acquired by Nir Zuk's Palo Alto Networks for $25 billion — the largest cybersecurity acquisition of Israel-founded software after Google's $32B Wiz deal.

Background & early career

Mokady was born in Israel in 1968. His professional training was unusual relative to the prevailing Israeli technology-founder pattern: he studied legal studies and business at Boston University rather than computer science or engineering. The technical depth came from his Israeli military service in intelligence and from operating-executive experience at Israeli technology companies through the 1990s. The combination — commercial operator with cybersecurity domain knowledge, not pure engineer — shaped the eventual CyberArk operating posture.

The founding moment

CyberArk was founded in 1999 in Petah Tikva by Mokady and Alon Cohen. The founding insight emerged from a then-novel observation: the highest-impact security failures inside large enterprises were not, in most cases, breaches of perimeter defenses but exploitations of administrative credentials that had been left dormant, over-privileged, or stored in unsecured locations. The CyberArk product — a vault-based system for storing, rotating, and auditing privileged credentials — productized the response. The early commercial trajectory was steady through the 2000s, with acceleration through the 2010s as compliance regimes and high-profile breaches drove enterprise adoption.

Twenty-four years of category-leadership discipline

Mokady's CEO tenure was characterized by sustained product depth in privileged access management combined with conservative commercial expansion. The strategic posture was the opposite of the platform-everything approach that defined some other Israeli cybersecurity companies of the period: CyberArk doubled down on a single category, built out the surrounding capabilities (session monitoring, just-in-time access, secrets management for application credentials, machine-identity protection) inside the same product gravity, and resisted dilutive M&A. The result was a company that, by the late 2010s, was the institutional default in privileged access management across the global enterprise.

Israeli cybersecurity at category-defining depth

Mokady's economic contribution is depth rather than breadth: a single Israeli company that has held global category leadership in privileged-access management for over two decades. Where Gil Shwed and Check Point established the firewall layer of Israeli cybersecurity, Mokady and CyberArk established the identity-and-access layer — and demonstrated that the Israeli cyber industry could produce multiple durable, defensible global category leaders rather than a single flagship. The 2026 Palo Alto Networks acquisition validated the position: Nir Zuk paid $25 billion to make CyberArk the fourth pillar of the Palo Alto platform alongside Strata, Prisma, and Cortex.

Today

Following the 2023 leadership transition, Mokady serves as Executive Chairman of CyberArk. Matt Cohen, a long-tenured CyberArk executive (no relation to co-founder Alon Cohen), succeeded him as CEO. The February 2026 acquisition by Palo Alto Networks for $25 billion — the largest strategic transaction in CyberArk's history — was executed under the Cohen-CEO Mokady-Chairman structure. The 2024 acquisition of Venafi for approximately $1.5 billion, expanding CyberArk into machine-identity protection, was the pre-transaction internal move that helped set the platform value for the Palo Alto deal.

Why Udi matters

The strategic question on CyberArk's chapter going forward is whether identity-security operates as a distinct pillar inside Palo Alto Networks or is absorbed into Cortex and Prisma over time. Mokady's chairman role and the retained CyberArk brand suggest the former. Execution over 2026–2027 is the variable.

Watch points

• CyberArk integration into the Palo Alto Networks four-pillar platform (Strata, Prisma, Cortex, CyberArk).
• Venafi machine-identity revenue trajectory inside the combined structure.
• Competitive dynamics with Okta, SailPoint, Microsoft Entra, and Wiz identity capabilities under Google.
• AI-agent and autonomous-system identity-management category development.
• Mokady's board role and any post-transaction additional positions.

Sources

CyberArk Software Ltd., Annual Report on Form 20-F, fiscal year 2024 (filed via SEC EDGAR). CyberArk investor materials at investors.cyberark.com. Palo Alto Networks 8-K filings, February 2026.

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• Marius Nacht: Check Point Co-Founder, aMoon Architect
• Assaf Rappaport: The Wiz Co-Founder Behind Israel's Largest Exit Ever
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The Olam Editorial Team

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